Author: LivingInJMJ

My name is Melissa. I am 42, married to my husband Joseph for 25 years. I have two children, both boys, ages 24 & 18. I have lived in New England my entire life. Being able to experience all four seasons is spectacular and there is always something to look forward to. My all time favorite season is Autumn. I lived on Cape Cod in MA for almost 30 years and now I reside in the White Mountains of NH. Some of my favorite pastimes are cooking, reading, embroidery, charity work and traveling.
I have been writing since I was a child. I am an Artisan Jeweler and I enjoy doing as much charity work as I can.
Last, but certainly not least, my most important relationship is the one that I have with the Roman Catholic Church. The Message of Fatima takes a main focus in life. I am who I am today because of my relationship with the Holy Trinity. I am a cradle Roman Catholic who was baptized as a baby but I did not live in a home that spoke about the Church. When I turned 15, life changed and I began a full time walk with God, Jesus and Our Blessed Mother Mary, the Saints and all the Angels.

Days had gone by and no results. I called the doctors every other day to find out if the results had arrived, and the nurse said, “I do not know what is holding up the results, please hold while I make a call.” I waited, feeling sick with fear. I come from a long line of women and men that have Cancer and almost every female on my dads side has had Cancer of some kind. “Hi Melissa, they had to send the results out to another lab to do a double check.”

I turned to my husband and told him, “I’m going to go lay down for a little while.”

As I walked upstairs to the bedroom, I knelt down by the side of the bed, still in so much pain and, emotionally, at this point, I was a mess.

Three weeks earlier…

As I was walking into CVS, I got a phone call as I was in the shampoo aisle. I put one hand over my ear while holding the phone closer to my other ear so that I could hear. A woman’s voice asked me if I was Melissa. “Yes, this is Melissa, may I ask who is calling?” What she said next changed my life, forever.

As I got back into my car I put my bag into the the backseat, turned forward and sat there. The rain was the hardest and quickest rain I had ever remembered hearing. “What just happened?” I asked myself. Sitting there, my mind gathering fully what was said, I felt waves of nausea overtaking my entire being.

“Melissa, I have your Mother at the hospital. She has been here for two weeks and we will not release her. She is tearing down metal doors,” said the female voice. At this point, a thousand memories flooded my mind.

My Mother, 64, had a history of Manic Depression and PTSD. She had a childhood that could only be described as horrific.

Mom had a heart of gold and would give her shirt for anyone. But she also had a side that haunted her. As a child I endured abuse. Out of the five children, I lived with Mom the longest and endured her not so good days in whatever form I had them delivered. In the end, I would be the only child that went on this journey with her.

One Week After my Operation …

As I kneeled down by the side of my bed, I could see the sun shining through the beige blinds. I closed my eyes and put my hands together as my head leaned into the bed. I opened my eyes and looked down at the rug. It’s funny in those times, how you notice the most smallest details of something you would’ve never seen before.

“God, it can’t be both ways, I can’t take care of Your daughter and have Cancer at the same time. It’s got to be one or the other. If it’s Cancer, fine, I will take it and I will accept it. If it’s going to be me taking care of my Mother to make sure that she can make her way into Heaven, then I ask You this, please, let her suffer whatever she has to suffer here, to make up for her sins on Earth. I don’t know if I’m going to make it to Heaven, but I hope I do, and if I do wind up there one day, I want to be with my Mother. I want her there, greeting me when I die.”

I was so weary, I was so tired and my mind was so exhausted. I couldn’t think and I was too tired to cry. I got into the bed and pulled the covers over me. I remember the bed being cold and I liked that.

I felt myself drifting off to sleep.

I opened my eyes and Joey was by my side, leaning over me, touching my shoulder. I turned over and I looked at him. “Your doctor called, everything is OK, your results are OK, it’s like what it was seven years ago, it was a clogged duct that had been causing the bleeding and clear liquid,” he said.

I smiled as tears rolled down my eyes. I sat up and my husband hugged me. I told him thank you. He asked me if I was going to come downstairs and I told him I’ll be down in just a minute. I got out of bed and got down again on my knees and as I looked at the clock, it had been less than one hour since my plea to God. “We have a deal,” I said, “and I promise You no matter how hard it gets, I will not go back out of my promise. I will take care of Your daughter.”

The Death …

I watched my Mother die for three years, slowly.

In and out of hospitals and nursing homes when she was only 64 years old.

Medical staffs, hospitals, friends, family, no one person for months could figure out what was going on.

A diagnosis of Lewy Body Dementia with possible Parkinson’s.

If anyone knows of Dementia, they will know it is one of the most cruelest diseases to watch someone die from. Mom had her good days and then she had her really bad days.

My Mother became my daughter for the last three years of her life.

On February 8, 2016 at 12:30 a.m. she died.

The Daisy …

I have had a devotion to Fatima since I was 16 years old. It began one night, as I was visiting my Mother at her apartment, we lost power after a strong storm came through. Living near the ocean, this was common.

As I sat upstairs, in Moms room, the only light there was, came from a skylight. The moon shined down on me. Being in the non-electronic age at that time, 1991, there wasn’t much to do when the power went out. As I reached around in the dark to my Mothers books, I pulled a random book out of the pile that was on her floor. I picked up a book and as I opened it up in the middle of the book, I saw May 13, 1917. This captured my attention because I was born on May 13. As I began to read, I read about Fatima and about the Miracle of the Sun in Portugal.

In the spring of 1992, I would meet my husband.

A week earlier to meeting Joey, I went to the Saint Anthony’s Church in Falmouth. I would walk there in the morning for the morning Mass. Kneeling down in the front pew, I asked God; if I could not be a Nun, would He please find me a man, who would be like an angel, a man who would treat me good and be a man of God. At the age of 15 I was considering becoming a Bride of Christ. I went to speak to my Parish Priest and he told me to come back when I was 18 years old. We had a nice conversation and I understood what he was saying about having to wait. God had different plans.

Many years would go by, and my love for Fatima was always ignited. I thought about Fatima over the years, in my 20s. Being a young wife and a mother, almost all of my attention was given to my children and my husband. I would look at Fatima information, etc. during those years and Fatima was in my heart. When my children became older and less reliant, I was able to go much more deeper into Fatima.

My in-laws who are 100% Portuguese and who came to the USA in the early 70’s would go to Portugal almost yearly and on one of those trips, they brought back a statue of Our Lady of Fatima. That beautiful statue, sits on my bureau drawer next to the statue of our Blessed Mother’s Son.

There would be many times when I would kneel in front of Jesus Christ and I would see His Beautiful Mother standing right there, next to Him, just as a Mother would stand next to her child. Many of those years were prayers about my Mother. Mom had a hard childhood and when she became older, as a teen, going into her married years and having children, a lot of events took place.

Mom would go on to lose custody of her children. In the end, I did go back with her and I look back now, even as I’m typing this, I know it is by the Grace of God that I am here today, I know that it is by the Grace of God that I have a stable life, stable mind, and a strong prayer life.

There came a point in Mom’s illness when she was going on to several months in the hospital and events took place within those months/years that were loving and also frightening.

The Daisy comes into play because my Mom’s favorite flower was a daisy. The reason why she loved daisies so much is because my Dad, one day, on the way back home from work, stopped and picked some wild daisies for her.

During the first week of February 2016, I received an early morning phone call from the nursing home. My husband answered and then handed me the phone. On the other line a nurse said,” Melissa, your Mother’s blood pressure is plummeting, what should we do?”

Months prior, doctors had gathered my husband and I together and told us that she more than likely was not going to live very long and while I denied them putting a feeding tube into her, which was the right decision.) Mom ate a full meal the day before she died and she was eating everyday. Her food had to be hand spooned to her after it was mashed.)

I told the nurse that there was a no revive form that had been signed and that when God was ready to take her home, God would bring His daughter home. She said okay. I remember getting on my hands and knees after that phone call and as I looked out the window, there was snow all over the ground. I looked at the statue of Jesus and Mary and I began to pray. I said, “Jesus I know that there is snow outside and I know that I am probably being very unreasonable, but If possible, would you please send me a daisy to let me know that mom made it to Heaven?”

The phone call came in at 12:38 a.m. in the morning that Mom had passed away on the morning of February 8. After my husband took the phone, and he hung up he told me that the nurse said, “tell your wife that she died with the Scapular on her neck.” This in itself was funny that she would say that because we never asked her about it.

I sat up in bed and was very quiet as I turned on the side light. I looked to my bureau drawer and there was Jesus, the Infant of Prague and our Lady of Fatima. I began to say a Rosary for her with my husband. Through tears, I think I got to the second decade and I started to look at the Infinite of Prague statue that was on my bureau drawer. My husband had found this a year earlier when our Church was cleaning out their little store that they had. There was one small detail on the Infant of Prague that was broken and my husband was able to get it for a donation.

I sometimes think in life that we don’t see things on purpose or we’re meant to see them when the time is right. I was staring at the Infinite of Prague, I noticed how there were daisies on the Infant of Prague statue. I told my husband, “Joey look, look at the daisies!!”

We both looked at each other and smiled, I told my husband and then I prayed to God and I said, “You know what? This is enough for me, I know that it’s snowing outside and to expect a daisy in this kind of weather is so foolish to think.”

That was enough for me.

Mom’s funeral would be held on February 11, she had her funeral on the feast Day of our Lady of Lourdes.

When my Mother passed away, a week before I had seen her, I put the Scapular that I had on my neck around her. I very much believe in the power and the promises of the Brown Scapular. The promises that our Lady of Fatima and the First Five Saturday Devotion, the Devotion that She tells us through Her Son Jesus Christ, the promises of the Rosary. At that time, while I knew about it, again, I think it’s one of those things that you just forget about because there’s so much going on.

Our Lady promises us that on the first Saturday after our death that she will come into Purgatory and bring us to Heaven.

I was not able to fulfill the First Five Saturdays, before my Mother passed away. There was so much going on between my operation, Moms sicknesses, I was moving etc. there was just so much going on at once. I think we can all relate to that. As I was sitting there, thinking, I wondered if our Blessed Mother would fulfill that Promise even though my Mother never fullfiled that in her life, not that I know of.

The Morning of the Miracle…

Joey, my son Andrew, who at the time was 16, we were at our vacation home in the White Mountains and every single Sunday, as is tradition, we sit down and we read the Bible and we have our family meeting. I opened up my Bible, and it was a new Bible that my husband and I have both gotten a few months ago. It is the Jerusalem Bible. We came across the Bible by watching Mother Angelica on EWTN. We have such a great deal of respect for her and love, that we wanted to be able to have the same Bible that she read.

Joey and I were talking about the new Jerusalem Bible and how we felt that it was a wonderful traditional Bible. I always put a place mark in the Bible, where it is that I last left off during the last family meeting and I opened it up. We had never seen the Bible without the book cover on and so for some reason, that day, we decided to remove the cover of the Bible, which is made out of fabric. As I was removing it, I opened up the very front of the Bible and sitting there was a daisy that was upside down. At that moment, the Bible was open, the blue part of the sun light window that is in our living room, was shining directly on the Bible. I thought I was seeing things for a second, because my mind was not wrapping around it that, that- was a daisy, laying right there. I looked at my husband and then my son. It was at that moment, that God and Jesus reminded me about the First Five Saturday promises and about how our Blessed Mother said that the Saturday after the death of the person that recited the prayers and went through with it, She would come and get that person from Purgatory and bring them to Heaven. My husband got up and my son and they came over, I jumped up from my chair with my Bible and I brought it over to the table. Joey grabbed a paper towel and we put the paper towel on top of the Daisy and then flipped the book over so that way we could have the Daisy facing upwards. The thing about this Daisy, is there was absolutely no stem piece to the Daisy it was just the Daisy itself. The Daisy was cool to the touch. There are pictures below. I then remembered as I was sitting there that it’s Sunday and that our Blessed Mother went to Purgatory and picked Mom up and brought her to Heaven on Saturday, even though I had not fulfilled the First Five Saturday’s. To me, I was even shocked, I questioned it and I couldn’t believe it for a little bit, it just didn’t seem real.

Even though I’m a Roman Catholic and I believe in the Miracles of the Saints, laypeople, etc. and you hear about it, at that moment, it was like, “huh?” Joey and I both looked at each other and we hugged each other. It was one of those moments that will never be forgotten. It increased my Faith. Even when I thought that my Faith could never be increased, it was increased.

I have always had a very strong devotion to Fatima. Years before, I started a Facebook page about Fatima that has grown to over 175,000 people.

This is my first time publicly sharing this Miracle, A testament to what happens when you have Faith. I have since kept my promise and have made my First Five Saturdays Devotion and I continue to do the Devotion for our Lady and for the lost souls on Earth and for the repose of souls. What happens when you believe. I have strongly followed the Fatima Center. I still remember the first time that I googled Fatima on YouTube and the Fatima center came up. It was Father Gruner. The entire Fatima Center staff and Father Gruner have changed my life. I have never met Father Gruner and I have never personally spoken with the Fatima center before, but it just goes to show that when people take the time to spread something that they believe in and follow by what God tells your heart, miracles like this happen. Peoples lives change.

Like this:

It is not difficult to observe the great sufferings of so many people in our affluent society. The sufferings caused by illness, death, the loss of faith of loved ones, financial difficulties, loss of jobs, etc. are just a few that are common among neighbors and acquaintances. Christ calls us all to take up these crosses and offer them to Him to make reparation for our own sins and the sins of the world. St. Francis de Sales has these beautiful words about your cross:

“The everlasting God has in His wisdom foreseen from eternity the cross that He now presents to you as a gift from His inmost Heart. This cross He now sends you. He has considered with His all-knowing eyes, understood with His Divine mind, tested with His wise justice, warmed with loving arms and weighed with His own hands to see that it be not one inch too large and not one ounce too heavy for you. He has blessed it with His holy Name, anointed it with His grace, perfumed it with His consolation, taken one last glance at you and your courage, and then sent it to you from Heaven, a special greeting from God to you, an alms of the all-merciful love of God.”

Thomas à Kempis has a special way of looking at the crosses we bear in our lives:

“To many the saying, ‘deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me,’ seems hard. How much harder, however, will the words on the Day of Judgment be: ‘Depart from Me, you accursed ones, into the everlasting fire.’ Those who follow the cross willingly now, will not fear the last judgment. When the Lord comes to judge, the Sign of the Cross will be in the heavens; then will those servants of the cross, who in their lifetime made themselves one with the Crucified, draw near with great trust to Christ, the Judge.

“Why are you afraid, then, to take up the cross when through it you can win an eternal kingdom? In the cross is salvation; in it is life; in it is protection from your enemies; in it is strength of mind; in it is joy of spirit; in it is the highest virtue; in the cross is perfect holiness.

“Take up your cross and follow Jesus, and you will merit eternal life.”

Our Lady of Fatima has impressed upon us the importance of accepting and carrying our crosses. She asked the three children, “Would you like to offer yourselves to God to make sacrifices and to accept willingly all the sufferings it may please Him to send you, in order to make reparation for so many sins which offend the Divine Majesty, to obtain the conversion of sinners, and to make amends for all the blasphemies and offenses committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary?” They accepted wholeheartedly. She told them they would have to suffer much, but that She would be there to help them.

Our Dear Mother is there to help us in our necessities, to help us bear our cross. Let us follow the example of Christ and Mary as did the children of Fatima. Let us take up our crosses and ask Our Heavenly Mother to help us.

Like this:

It is said that all the heresies of today are resurrected heresies of the past with new names.

While the suppression of holy images today is not called iconoclasm, it echoes that same heresy which was condemned by the Seventh Ecumenical Council. From Apostolic times holy images and their proper devotional use have been an integral part of the Church and the Council of Nicea in 787 confirmed this.

From the Catacombs

Most frequently used images (from the catacombs to the lavish decor of the Thirteenth Century Cathedrals) are of Our Lord and of Our Lady.

Indeed a traditional devotion to Mary (which we should follow by virtue of paragraph 67 of the Constitution of the Church promulgated by Vatican Council II) has been the recognition of the Queenship of Mary through the coronation of Her images.

Picture by St. Luke

Many Popes crowned especially the picture reputed to have been painted by Saint Luke the Evangelist, and which is venerated in Saint Mary Major’s in Rome. Pope Clement VIII did so at the very height of the Reformation, at the end of the 16th Century, when the honoring of Our Lady’s images was again being called into question as it had been at the time of the Second Council of Nicea. And Gregory XVI, surrounded by Cardinals and prelates, solemnly crowned the same picture on August 15, 1837, and issued an Apostolic brief, Caelestis Regina, which has supplied a form for such coronations ever since.

Perhaps the most solemn act of the coronation of Our Lady by that same image in St. Mary Major’s was reserved for our day. It had two phases: one in Fatima and one in Rome.

In 1946, Pope Pius XII sent Cardinal Masella to Fatima to crown the statue at the place where Our Lady had appeared in 1917 with a promise of world peace. As the Cardinal was about to leave Rome, the Pope said to him:

“Be mindful, Eminence, you are going to crown the Queen of the World.”

It was only eight years later that the world fully understood how profoundly the Pope meant this.

In 1954 when the same Pontiff proclaimed a “Marian Year” in honor of the centenary of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, His Holiness asked for the erection of shrines and images of Our Lady in public places. As a result, today statues and shrines of Our Lady are to be seen in the gardens of private homes, at turns of the highway, even at the entrance of some major airports of the world (as in Shannon and Buenos Aires). And in November, 1954, the Holy Father closed that “Marian Year” in a most extraordinary way.

Instead of going to St. Mary Major’s to crown the image of Our Lady, as so many of his predecessors had done, the Pope ordered that the venerable picture attributed to St. Luke be taken from its place and carried processionally (it was accompanied by tens of thousands of people) to St. Peter’s! There, on the altar over the tomb of Peter, the Pope solemnly crowned the picture and promulgated the Encyclical Ad Coeli Reginam.

To the astonishment of all, the Pope … on this most solemn occasion … recalled the statue at Fatima which he had crowned (through Cardinal Masella in 1946) as the MESSENGER OF HER ROYALTY. His Holiness said: “It is in the recognition of the Queenship of Mary that the world will find its greatest source of hope.”

As the Auxiliary Bishop of Fatima at that time, I was present with a banner from the Sanctuary of Fatima because the Pope had also asked that banners be there from all Marian Sanctuaries, and there were hundreds. On each the Pope affixed a commemorative medal. Many may wonder why the Holy Father did this and why he referred especially to the statue of Our Lady of Fatima as the MESSENGER OF HER ROYALTY.

The Pilgrim Virgin

After Pope Pius had crowned the statue at Fatima in 1946, a youth congress at Fatima asked that a copy of the statue, crowned by the Pope’s Legate, be carried processionally towards Russia.

My predecessor as Bishop of Fatima, Don Jose Correia da Silva, after consulting with Lucia sent forth a statue which became known as the “Pilgrim Virgin”.

Wonders occurred. Doves, flying wild in the sky, came and rested at Her feet. Cures occurred. And while the statue was in Rome on its way to the Orient, in 1950, the Pope saw a reenactment of the miracle of the sun over the Vatican. In 1951, in a broadcast from the Vatican relayed to the world and to hundreds of thousands of people gathered at Fatima on that occasion, the Pope said:

“In 1946, I crowned Our Lady at Fatima Queen of the World, and the following year, as the Pilgrim Virgin. She went forth (as though to claim Her Dominion) and the favors She performs along the way are such that we can hardly believe what we are seeing with our eyes.”

Act of Consecration

Today, as the Pilgrim Virgin enters diocese upon diocese throughout the world, She is crowned by Bishops and pastors and by the faithful.

This crowning of Our Lady is an acknowledgment of our fealty to Her. We acknowledge that, as a Queen, She has all rights over us.

Pope Pius said that in this devotion lies the world’s greatest hope of peace. We pray that, through the presence of this image of your Queen, each soul will experience Her Motherly and Queenly presence. We pray that She will lead and preserve your nation forever into the peace of Her Son, Our Savior, Christ.

The Next Phase in the Humanae Vitae “Rewrite”: Pin It on the Laity by Christopher A. Ferrara February 8, 2018 It is now obvious to Catholics of good will, not just the “traditionalists” and “Fatimites” who recognized it immediately, that “the current Pope’s leadership has become a danger…

Like this:

The coat of arms of Pope John Paul II is intended as an act of homage to the central mystery of Christianity, the Redemption.

And so the main representation is a cross, whose form, however, does not correspond to the customary heraldic model. The reason for the unusual placement of the vertical sec­tion of the cross is readily apparent if one considers the second object inserted in the coat of arms — the large and majestic capital M. This recalls the presence of Mary be­neath the cross and Her exceptional participation in the Redemption.

The greater devotion of the Holy Father to the Virgin Mary is manifested in this manner, as it was also expressed in his motto as Cardinal Wojtyla: TOTUS TUUS (All Yours). Nor can one forget that within the confines of the ecclesiastical province of Krakow, there is situated the celebrated Marian shrine of Czestochowa, where the Polish people for centuries fostered their filial devotion to the Mother of God.

Like this:

The Guardian Angel of Portugal appeared to the three children of Fatima to prepare them for Our Lady’s appearance. He joined the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus with the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He said, The Hearts of Jesus and Mary have merciful designs on you. The angel taught them to pray to God for the conversion of sinners through the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We can see the importance the Two Hearts have in our lives.

Jesus gave St. Margaret Mary Alacoque great promises to those who would honor His Sacred Heart. To encourage your devotion we reprint below the twelve promises of the Sacred Heart.

The Twelve Promises of Our Lord

to Those who Honor His Sacred Heart:

1. I will give them all the graces necessary for their state of life.

2. I will give peace in their families.

3. I will console them in all their troubles.

4. They shall find in My Heart an assured refuge during life and especially at the hour of death.

9. I will bless the homes in which the image of My Sacred Heart shall be exposed and honored.

10. I will give to priests the power to touch the most hardened hearts.

11. Those who propagate this devotion shall have their name written in My Heart, and it shall never be effaced.

12. The all-powerful love of My Heart will grant to all those who shall receive Communion on the First Friday of nine consecutive months the grace of final repentance; they shall not die under My displeasure, nor without receiving their Sacraments; My Heart shall be their assured refuge at that last hour.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus,
have mercy on us.
Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.

Our Lady of Fatima revealed to Lucy the great promise for those who fulfill the Five First Saturdays in reparation to Her Immaculate Heart. While Lucy was praying in her cell at the convent, Our Lady appeared, together with the Child Jesus elevated on a cloud of light. Our Lady rested one hand on Lucy’s shoulder. In the other, she held a heart surrounded with sharp thorns. The Child Jesus spoke first:

“Have pity on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother. It is covered with the thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to remove them with an act of reparation.”

Then Our Lady said,

“My daughter, look at My Heart encircled with the thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, by their blasphemies and ingratitude. Do you at least try to console Me and announce in My name that I promise to assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, go to Confession and receive Holy Communion, recite the Rosary and keep Me company for a quarter of an hour while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary with the intention of making reparation to My Immaculate Heart.”

Will you not also heed Jesus’ requests to console His Heart and the Heart of His Mother?

Like this:

The three seers of Fatima, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, aged 9 and 7, and their cousin Lucy dos Santos, 10, were closely watched and questioned because of the appearances of Our Lady to them. Priests, villagers, their parents questioned them over and over again, and their accounts of the apparitions did not change.

In fact, on the day of the apparition of August 13, the mayor, an atheist, kidnaped the three children and put them in jail. He threatened to boil them in oil if they would not reveal the secret Our Lady gave them, but they would not tell him. The prefect took Jacinta away. A few moments later he came back, told them Jacinta was dead, and asked the other two if they would change what they had said. They would not. Francisco was taken away. Later still the mayor returned, after claiming that Francisco had been “killed”, and asked Lucy again if she would deny what she saw. Again she refused. Even under threat of this terrible death, the three children did not give in to the demands of the mayor. Later, in fear of the crowd, he let the children go free.

We are compelled then to believe in Fatima because the children were reliable witnesses. They withstood threats of death. They showed that what they saw had taken a firm grip on them and they led very holy lives; so holy that little Jacinta’s body was found to be incorrupt in the tomb after fifteen years buried in quicklime.

Furthermore, some of the 70,000 witnesses who saw the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima are still alive today, and bear witness to the miracle of Fatima. It was seen by devout persons and skeptics. The skeptics came away converted and helped to publish the news. The Church investigators looked into all questions, even that of mass hysteria, but that too was ruled out after one of the most thorough investigations into matters of this kind in the history of the Church. People a few miles away from the main mass of people saw it too, and they could not have been influenced by mass hysteria. This Miracle was given to show the world that the Message of Fatima was to be taken seriously and that it was from God.

We have testimony of the Popes as authorities and worthy of belief, who firmly testify in favor of Fatima; let them speak for themselves.

“The time for doubting Fatima is past. It is now time for action”, said Pius XII. “Fatima is the center of all Christian hopes,” said Pope John XXIII. Pope Paul VI sent the Golden Rose to Fatima on May 13, 1965, and on the inscription, he entrusted the whole Church to Her care. He also blessed in a special ceremony statues of Our Lady of Fatima for many countries including our Canadian National Pilgrim.

The evidence that God has spoken to us through Our Lady at Fatima is overwhelming. If we still cannot acknowledge Fatima, we have either not understood the evidence, or else we are lacking in natural faith and should pray God for it.

Father William A. Hinnebusch, O.P. explains,

“There are other things besides the solemn teaching authority of the Church that bind a person to accept something. A creature endowed with reason is obliged by his own intelligence to bow to evidence when it is present. To resist evidence is to be obstinately anti-intellectual. Furthermore, when reliable witnesses testify to an event or fact which seems incontrovertible, a reasonable man must give assent. To say he may refuse assent without blame is a questionable proposition.“

“When a person of such outstanding authority as the late Pope Pius XII says: ‘The time for doubting Fatima is past; it is now time for action,’ then reasonable men must stop and question whether good evidence offered by reliable witnesses is not behind the conviction. For a Catholic deliberately to close his mind to such a statement hardly can be without blame.”

Like this:

It was October 13, 1917. More than 70,000 people were gathered at the Cova da Iria at Fatima, Portugal. It was raining, it had been for two days, and the roads and fields were covered with mud.

People were praying the Rosary when suddenly Lucy cried out and pointed to the sky. The crowd looked up, and before their eyes the clouds parted and the sun began to shine. It looked like a bright silver disc, and everyone could look straight at it without it hurting their eyes. Slowly it began to spin, then faster and faster, giving off beams in every direction. These beams were red, blue, green, violet, and every other color. It was very beautiful.

People could see the Miracle of the Sun for miles around. The sun stopped whirling and for a moment it was still. Then it started to spin a second time, faster than before. It stopped a second time. Then it began to spin a third time, and this time the rays it was giving off were more brilliant than before.

Suddenly, as if the spinning had torn the sun from its place, it plummeted so near to the earth that the crowd below could feel its burning heat and the light was so bright people could no longer look towards it. It seemed like the end of the world. In fear and penance the people fell to their knees in spite of the mud, asking God’s pardon for their sins.

Just as suddenly as it had begun, the miracle ended. The sun stopped short and climbed back to its usual place in the sky, to the relief of the frightened people. The people rose from their knees, preparing to leave. On right and left were cries of astonishment when they noticed that their clothes, which had been muddy and wet from the rain which had been falling just minutes before, were dry and clean. Many sick and crippled were cured of their afflictions.

Canada’s Pilgrim Virgin Statue was blessed by Our Holy Father Pope Paul VI on May 13, 1963 at Fatima. This Statue visits the different dioceses of Canada and these visits are the occasion of many spiritual and temporal blessings given through Our Heavenly Mother’s intercession.

“This,” says Father Montes de Oca, “was the great miracle promised, which took place precisely at the time and place fixed, and which was to compel men to believe in the reality of the apparitions, and to obey the message which Our Lady of the Rosary brought them from Heaven.”

Like this:

I must not be the only one out there that decides to not listen to music with words in it. At least, not as a first choice. I prefer a good instrumental playlist over one with words. Music has such a profound effect on a person. And if you’re not emotionally strong, it can definitely break you.

I remember going through a period of enjoying music in my teens, my 20s, and then my 30s rolled around and when life events began to take place in my late 20s, I would find myself having playlists with songs that would just bring me to a dark place. The more I listened to the music, the worst that I would feel.

Have you ever sought out lyrics to just find a song that would match your mood? I’m pretty sure that we all have.

My earliest memories of music go back to Christmas. I love Christmas music and that is one of the only genres of music that I listen to that have words in it. I love the music of the Roman Catholic Church, especially Gregorian Chant.

Thinking back, to where it is that music began to have a hold on me, my earliest memory, would be my mother and I, each grabbing a brush and she would put Barbra Streisand albums on. My mother loved Barbara. She would be Barbra and I would be whoever was singing duet with Barbra Streisand. We would look at each other and dance around the kitchen table, laughing, giggling, music had a profound affect.

My dad is a Moody Blues guy. As we would head up to go camping in the White Mountains, every single summer, on the drive up there, Dad would always be playing a Moody blues cassette. I memorized every single one of those songs. Nights in White satin, is one that I love. I don’t know why I loved it at the time and I still don’t know why I do today.

As a child, at night, my bed was next to the window and I used to open the window on a beautiful summers night and I always remember hearing the trees, the way that the leaves would sound in the trees, this is still, today one of my favorite sounds. I would Sing to the trees, I would sing to the night, very softly, and it would never be a song that I had ever heard, it would just be lyrics that would be coming from my heart. I don’t recollect many of them, besides me telling the moon how beautiful that I thought it was and how grateful I was that the stars lit up the sky at night so I could see the trees, see the leaves that would be swaying their nightly lullaby.

In my teen years, I was very much into the pop rock scene. In my late teens into my 20s I went back to loving all of the 70s music that I was brought up on and still yet, it would invoke so much emotion, so much to the point that I almost began to feel beside myself – becoming emotional by the memories that were being brought back – from the situations in life.

Music, is so beautiful and amazing but it can also have a very profound and depressive state. And if you let yourself get into that kind of a mode, you are setting yourself up for feeling the way that you are feeling, that’s what it really comes down to in the end.

In my 30s and in my early 40s, where I am now, I have come to love instrumental music. There are times that I will still listen to some 70s music but there is such peace and beauty in instrumental music. Perhaps it’s because that emotional state is not there and I’ve come to realize that what I thought was an avoidance problem, was a smart decision to not be wrapped up in any kind of entity that will cause an emotional downfall. None of us need that. And such is the power of music.

So, if you find yourself, listening to music that is bringing you to places where you have already walked away from, make that decision, to either turn it off and find something different that is going to soothe your soul or you can decide to stay in the state of depression, in the state of constantly going back to those issues in your life that you left behind.

Share this:

Like this:

Canada’s Pilgrim Virgin Statue was blessed by Our Holy Father Pope Paul VI on May 13, 1967 on the occasion of his pilgrimage to Fatima to pray for peace. His Holiness wanted this very special statue to travel throughout Canada to remind us of Our Lady’s maternal message of love and concern for us. The Statue visits the different dioceses of Canada and these visits are the occasion of many spiritual and temporal blessings given through Our Heavenly Mother’s intercession. In this way, many people get to know about our only hope for peace — Our Lady of Fatima’s Peace Plan from Heaven.

The National Pilgrim Virgin Statue goes where She is officially invited. You may like to ask your parish priest to invite Her to your church. Many Cathedrals, Parishes, Schools, Convents, Monasteries, Hospitals and Senior Citizens Homes have received a visit of Our Lady. To arrange a visit to your area contact: